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English Language Notes (2010) - The aesthetics of affect in the shot-by-shot remakes of Psycho and Funny Games

Details

  • article: The aesthetics of affect in the shot-by-shot remakes of Psycho and Funny Games
  • author(s): Steffen Hantke
  • journal: English Language Notes (2010)
  • issue: volume 48, issue 1, page 113
  • journal ISSN: 0013-8282
  • publisher: University of Colorado at Boulder
  • keywords: Analysis, Motion picture criticism, Motion pictures, Popular culture, Psycho (1998), Psycho (1960)

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Abstract

Hantke notes that the "formulaic predictability" of horror film, made evident in the recent craze for horror remakes, does not normally short-circuit the genre's production of affective intensity for and in its audience. However, the extreme version, the "shot-by-shot" remake like Gus Van Sant's Psycho, destroys the pleasure of suspenseful "shock-horror," offering in its place an "uncanny stereoscopic viewing experience" (with the remake superimposed upon an original that is "always present in its latent form") and a discomfiting "meta-critical" awareness of one's own positionality as horror spectator.